


i'll dive in deeper, deeper for you

by getmean



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anxiety, Established Relationship, Introspection, M/M, Swimming, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:28:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23367730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getmean/pseuds/getmean
Summary: Avery looks, trying to see what Natza sees. He thinks the beauty of it is lost on him. The sea is the sea, even if the way the light hits the waves today is nice. Tomorrow it could be stone grey and tussling with them, or a placid flat blue that has them tussling with it. Familiarity always brings contempt, right? Or maybe he’s just feeling particularly resentful for the way the water had seemed to swallow Natza like it was something personal. The way it had fought Avery’s rescuing of him every step of the way.Commission for my good friend Jo :~)
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Kudos: 2





	i'll dive in deeper, deeper for you

**Author's Note:**

> these character's don't belong to me! i was commissioned by jordan to write a little story about the pair, and was really happy to do so :~~~~) i hope i've done the Boys proud! thank you for letting me pick your brain for character info!

A week after Natza had gone overboard, Avery is still feeling jumpy. 

Every time the tiefling so much as wanders close to the handrail at the edge of the deck, Avery feels his heart leap up into his chest and stay there until Natza wanders off again. The worst part is that he doesn’t even know the anxiety it causes Avery; it’s almost comical, how completely unobservant Natza is when it comes to things like this. All far as he’s aware, he’s just clinging hold of the handrail to catch a glimpse of the horizon, but Avery can see disaster in everything.

What if next time he goes over, Avery doesn’t get to him in time? What if Avery doesn’t even notice? There’s only so many hours in the day that he can keep his eyes on his new husband after all. And there’s so many hours that Natza spends idle.

The worrying chews at him. At night they sit below decks in Avery’s room, and Natza reads out loud from whatever book he has his nose in that day, while Avery watches them both in the mirror and tries to push the incident out of his head.

Tonight is no different, though the roles are reversed. Avery, from his seat between Natza’s knees, is reading slowly and fumblingly from one of the weathered old tomes that Natza is currently weighing the ship down with. Natza is busy at Avery’s hair, combing it out wavy from his braids. All around them the ship is quiet, everyone either bedded down for the night or up above them on the deck. Avery can hear distant laughter over the creaking of the ship, the sound of the water sloshing against the sides. Natza scratches at Avery’s scalp, and he groans, tips his head back into his touch as Natza laughs. 

“Feels good?” he asks, and Avery hums.

“Gets sore, having it all tied up.”

Natza pulls Avery’s hair back from his face, fingertips brushing at his temples, catching all the wispy strands of hair as he murmurs, “You’ve got so much of it, it’s bound to.”

“You love it,” Avery replies, and closes his eyes at the kiss that Natza presses to the crown of his head. He can sense there’s something on Natza’s mind; can feel it in his silence, in the tender way he combs his fingers through Avery’s hair before he starts parting it to braid it back up. Natza’s always been an easy read, at least to Avery. He touches his hand to Nazta’s knee, and feels his attention sharpen up. “You’re thinking so loud I can hear it,” he says.

“Am I?”

Avery smiles into his lap. “You are.”

Silence drops between them as they rock with the ship, as Natza’s delicate hands finish the loose, fat plait that Avery likes to sleep in. Above their head, the hammock swings, the room thick with the smell of Natza’s oils, his perfumes; smoky and sweet and heady. Avery closes his eyes, just as Natza’s hands come to rest on his shoulders.

“You’ve been watching me a lot lately,” he murmurs, voice low as his fingers work at the knots in Avery’s shoulders. “More than usual, I mean.”

“I worry about you,” Avery answers, honestly. Chin tipped to his chest as Natza works at tenseness in his muscles he didn’t even know he had. “Is that a bad thing?”

“Not a bad thing,” Natza says, softly. He sounds tired today; the skin under his eyes purple and bruised-looking. Suddenly, Avery feels bad for worrying him, feels bad for letting his worry spill over into Natza. Sometimes he feels like such an open channel of emotion that it’s easy to forget that not everyone wants the same. 

He turns, upsetting Natza’s hands from his shoulders, ready to tell him to forget it, that he’ll try to be less overbearing in his worries for him, just as Natza adds, “But what can we do to make you worry less?”

Avery blinks at him, and Natza is lovely in the low candlelight, the flame weaving with the air that Avery shifts as he moves to cup Natza’s cheek. Smooth skin under his hand that dimples when he smiles. Even an open channel gets to be surprised every once in a while, right? To be cared for after so long of caring for others rocks him right down to his core. 

“I’ll think on it,” he says, and Natza tips his face into Avery’s hand, dark eyes reflecting the candlelight back to him.

——————

They drop anchor at a small, densely-wooded island a few days later, a handful of men plus Avery and Natza loading into one of the small boats to reach dry land. The sun is high and bright in the sky, endless blue stretching from horizon to horizon, and there’s a vague bloodlust to the air that has the hairs on Avery’s nape standing up. The men are chattering amongst themselves about who is gonna kill the biggest hog to stock the ship’s barrels, who’s gonna trap the most rabbits to keep their bellies full for days to come. 

Natza sits in the middle of their posturing; serene and hollow-eyed, quiet in his exhaustion. Avery wonders if it comforts him to know that he would probably be able to bring down every animal on the island in a heartbeat, if he wanted to. He also wonders if Natza hates hearing all the talk of death. Can both things exist in a body? He is thinks if two such opposite sides of a self could exist anywhere, it’d be in Natza. 

Sand scrapes up against the belly of the boat as it runs ashore. Jolting them all in their seats, and then there’s the flurry of movement as they all hop out to drag it the rest of the way to dry land. Within minutes, men are already surveying the lay of the land, still boasting amongst each other about who was gonna come home with the best prize. Avery, who is by all accounts there to supervise, and Natza, stand apart from the pack. Natza’s eyes are on the tree-line, something considering in his expression.

Avery touches his elbow. “Okay?” 

Natza hums, and half-turns, eyes sweeping out over the horizon, over the waves glittering with that high noon sunlight. He squints against it, brings a delicate hand up to shield his eyes as he says, “Everything’s just so beautiful.” His hair gets stirred by the breeze, rushed over the waves so it’s salty and fresh-smelling. Avery knows when he puts his face into Natza’s hair that night he’ll smell like it too. 

He smiles, and then nudges at Natza’s waist, keeps ahold of the gauzy fabric bunched there just to stay close. “You’ll get used to it.”

Natza’s dark eyes turn to him, sweet and very open under the shadow of his hand. “I hope not,” he says, and Avery wants to badly to kiss him that he can feel it in his throat. A craving like thirst. The sun beats down on the nape of his neck, hot like a palm curved over the skin. Then Natza turns away to walk up the beach, and Avery follows as though attached to him by a rope, love-drunk fool that he is. 

As the others melt away into the forest, Avery hangs back to keep an eye on the horizon, and Natza hangs back to keep him company. They sit close to the shoreline, just above that ring of darker wet sand, the smell of the sea thick in Avery’s nose. Natza hugs his knees to his chest, hair still caught by the sea breeze, eyes on the horizon and bare feet wiggling in the sand. 

“You’ve never been to a beach before,” Avery says, and Natza glances at him, something sardonic in his expression at Avery’s question-that’s-not-a-question.

“I’ve read about the sea,” he says. Puts his chin to his knees and settles his eyes once more on the waves. “But it’s not the same. Words can’t capture this.” 

Avery looks too, trying to see what Natza sees. He thinks the beauty of it is lost on him. The sea is the sea, even if the way the light hits the waves today is nice. Tomorrow it could be stone grey and tussling with them, or a placid flat blue that has them tussling with it. Familiarity always brings contempt, right? Or maybe he’s just feeling particularly resentful for the way the water had seemed to swallow Natza like it was something personal. The way it had fought Avery’s rescuing of him every step of the way.

“You wanna go in?” Natza asks him, and Avery jolts from his reverie, from the phantom grasp of the cold sea and Natza’s hair wet to his forehead, his eyes huge and scared in his face. 

“What?”

Natza shrugs, cheek to his knees as he picks through the tiny shells that litter the sand. He holds one up, pink and flat like a baby’s fingernail, then flicks it away. His eyes draw back to the water, and he sighs. “It looks nice, doesn’t it? I’m so hot, and the water looks so cool.”

Avery searches his face, watching Natza’s profile for what must lurk behind that seemingly innocuous ask. But he comes away still curious; the only emotion in Natza’s expression is a dreamy sort of yearning. Can he be so fearless because he doesn’t know what bad the world can hold? No, surely not. He’s seen more bad than most. Sometimes Avery feels put to shame by Natza’s uncharacteristic shows of bravery. 

“Okay,” he says, slowly. “We can go in.”

Natza looks at him sidelong. “Yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Avery says, more to convince himself than anything else. “We won’t go out deep.”

Natza smiles at him, tender as sticky, bruised fruit. “Maybe it’ll make you worry less if we go for a swim and it doesn’t end with me getting hauled out of the water by you.”

Avery snorts, looking away down the expanse of the beach, to the rocky outcrop he can see a few men fishing from. He watches them for a moment, idly, turning the thought over in his head. Natza is quiet to his side, waiting. 

Eventually, Avery sighs, and hauls himself up from the ground. Sticks a hand out for Natza to grab so he can pull him up too. “I wouldn’t call what happened last time ‘going for a swim’,” is all he says, but then grins at the way Natza rolls his eyes. 

They strip down to their underclothes, Natza throwing Avery a playful little glance over his shoulder as he slips from his clothes; barely a light bolt of cloth fastened at his waist with a belt. Avery fights the urge to grab at him, want welling in his chest at the small dip of Natza’s waist, the delicate way he steps from his clothes to head for the water. Gold still catches the sun at his wrists and at his ears, but Avery’s throat and mouth have dried up at how Natza looks, near-bare in all that warm afternoon light, that he can’t find the words to tell him to take his jewellery off. Instead he just follows Natza down to the shoreline, moving on autopilot, strung along by the bumps of Natza’s spine and the way his shaggy hair is just starting to flirt with the tops of his shoulders. 

The sea is balmy when he steps into it, the water parting at his calves, his knees, his thighs, until he gets in up to his waist and stops. Turns back to find Natza standing up to his knees in the water. Avery watches him, watches the way the water throws ghostly reflections of light on Natza’s thighs, his stomach. 

“Okay?” he calls. Natza’s head bobs. “Come here, it’s not deep.”

“You ever get afraid of stepping on something?” he asks, drawing closer. Walking like he walks across the wet deck sometimes; cautious, picky, like a little bird. 

“No,” Avery says, and then reaches out a hand for Natza to grasp, pulling him in a little deeper. The water laps at his sternum, at Natza’s collarbones. Nerves flutter in his chest at seeing Natza in the water, but the sand under his bare feet has him grounded, feeling more secure as he urges Natza to float. “C’mon,” he murmurs, one hand supporting Natza between his shoulders, the other at the small of his back. Natza’s eyes are screwed shut, face scrunched up as the water laps at his temples. Avery laughs. “You ever done this?” he asks.

“Not since I was drowning,” Natza mutters, quick, like he’s gonna swallow the sea if he opens his mouth for too long. Avery doesn’t laugh at that, just leans down to press a kiss to Natza’s forehead.

“Relax,” he murmurs, and watches as Natza does just that. Face smoothing out, lips bowing in a little open-mouthed pout as he sucks in a nervous gulp of air. His shoulders ease from where they had been bunched up by his ears, his hands unfurling from their tight fists. Avery watches in silence, come over so heavy and tender with how easily Natza had decided to trust him that he can’t do anything but feel it. The sun on his shoulders, the smell of the sea, the distant noises of his crew-mates on the island. Natza, weightless in his arms, mouth curving in a smile as he opens his eyes to look at Avery. 

“You still worried?” he asks, smile stretching as Avery snorts and takes his hands away, letting Natza float without his help. Skin only just a deeper blue than the water, like a fragment of the sea made skin and bone. 

A beat of silence passes, in which Avery tests that question against the warm core of himself that loves Natza so deeply. Just the rush of the waves and the gulls circling overhead. Natza cracks one eye open, the sun winking on the gold in his ears, drifting with the waves so easily Avery could almost imagining him swimming. 

“I’m not worried,” he says, finally. Decides it just as the words leave his mouth. And Natza grins, and goes right back to floating with his eyes closed. Avery watches him a moment more and then smiles himself, settles onto his back to feel the sun on his skin and watch the birds cry above their heads.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
